Wikipedia: Dimethyl ether

Conventional DME production uses the methanol dehydration method.^[1] For mass production of DME as a fuel other methods are being considered, the main one being DME synthesis from hydrogen and CO gas, also known as syngas.^[2]

DME can be produced from methanol by combining two methanol molecules to produce a DME molecule and a water molecule.^[3] This is a reversible reaction.^[3] This can be shown in the following equation:

methanol → dimethyl ether + water

2CH3OH → CH3OCH3 + H2O

There are various companies developing this method of DME production, the most active one being JFE Holding in Japan.^{[citation needed]} The DME-synthesis method has a better overall efficiency because with methanol dehydration,^{[citation needed]} the methanol is firstly produced from a base source such as LPG, NG or coal via synthesis and then this is converted into DME.^{[citation needed]} This method attempts to cut out the intermediate methanol production and produce DME from LPG, NG, coal or even biomass in one process.^{[citation needed]}